Glazyev Publishes Economic Policy Paper for Addressing the Economic Warfare Against Russia

March 2, 2022 (EIRNS)—Russian Academician Sergei Glazyev—economist, former MP, former advisor to President Vladimir Putin, and current Eurasian Economic Commission Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics—published a lengthy article on Feb. 25, two days before President Biden announced sweeping new financial and economic sanctions against Russia. In the document, titled “Sanctions and Sovereignty” and published in the respected economics weekly Expert, Glazyev presented a detailed proposal for how Russia should respond to the crisis. His proposals are of importance today, since Russia is currently discussing how they will respond to the financial warfare, as Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated today.

Glazyev began by explaining that Russia had not been seriously harmed by the sanctions to date. “The main result of the U.S.-European sanctions was a change in the geographical structure of Russian foreign economic relations in favor of China, the expansion of cooperation with which fully compensates for the curtailment of trade and economic relations with the EU.” Russia also diversified its reserves out of the dollar into other currencies and gold.

He then recounted that in 2014, when the ruble came under attack, “the Bank of Russia switched to a free-floating exchange rate regime,” and this mechanism allowed foreign speculators to loot billions of dollars from the economy. “These figures are quite comparable to the volume of investments in a major infrastructure project in the real sector of the economy,” he stated.

In the current situation,

“there is also a potential risk of seizure of Russian state assets. But we can respond to this symmetrically by imposing an embargo on servicing debt obligations to Western creditors and also arresting their assets. The losses of the parties will be approximately equal.” Glazyev went on to make additional specific proposals:

“Measures to tighten currency regulation in order to stop the export of capital and expand targeted lending to enterprises in need of financing investments and working capital....

“It is advisable to introduce taxation of currency speculation and transactions in dollars and euros on the domestic market.

“We need serious investments in R&D in order to accelerate the development of our own technological base in the areas affected by sanctions—first of all, the defense industry, energy, transport and communications.

“It is necessary to complete the de-dollarization of our foreign exchange reserves, replacing the dollar, euro, and pound with gold....

“It is necessary to introduce a digital ruble as soon as possible, which could be used for cross-border payment and settlement operations bypassing the banking system subject to sanctions pressure....

“Invite partners in Asia to introduce a global payment and settlement currency based on the index of national currencies and exchange-traded goods.”

Glazyev concluded:

“In general, much remains to be done to strengthen national sovereignty in the economy. American sanctions are the agony of the outgoing imperial world economic system based on the use of force. In order to minimize the dangers associated with it, it is necessary to accelerate the formation of a new—integral—world economic order which restores international law, national sovereignty, equality of countries, diversity of national economic models, principles of mutual benefit and voluntariness in international economic cooperation.”